Combining two optimized and affordable methods to assign chemoreceptors to a specific signal

Chemotaxis allows bacteria to detect specific compounds and move accordingly. This pathway involves signal detection by chemoreceptors (MCPs). Attributing a chemoreceptor ligand is difficult because there lot of redundancy in the MCPs that recognize single ligand. We propose methodology define which bind given First, an MCP overproduced increase sensitivity ligand(s) it recognizes, thus promoting accumulation cells around agarose plug containing low attractant concentration. Second, ligand-binding domain (LBD) fused maltose-binding protein (MBP), facilitates purification provides control for thermal shift assay (TSA). An melting temperature LBD presence indicates directly binds it. showed overexpression two Shewanella oneidensis (SO_0987 SO_1056) promoted swimming toward concentration chromate. The each was MBP. A TSA revealed only from SO_1056 had its increased In conclusion, we describe efficient approach chemoreceptor-ligand pairs before undertaking more-sophisticated biochemical structural studies.